


Midnight

by TruthandLies



Category: Adventures in Babysitting (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:43:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TruthandLies/pseuds/TruthandLies
Summary: Lola loves to dream in color. Her father thinks she should dream in black-and-white. She's determined not to become another suburban drone.





	Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackEPeace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/gifts).



>   
> 
> 
> * * *

Secrets lurk in the middles of midnight.

Light slips through the darkness, illuminating worlds unknown to those lost in dreams.

At fourteen, Lola sneaks from her parents’ split-level suburban home, tumbling down the trellis and onto the lawn. Shadows play across the grass, toying with her bare toes. She giggles and skips in purple pajama pants through the dark-not-dark, ignoring her suburban pain.

Lola loves to dream. In color. But even more, she loves to seek out worlds.

In other worlds, there is no Perfect. In other worlds, there is just Lola.

And Lola exists in a world without pain. 

In this world, the grass squishes beneath her toes. A world of mud. And worms crawling beneath her feet. And chaos crashing through her mind.

Chaos that sounds just like her father, slamming open her bedroom door, crashing it against her wall. Chaos that sounds like the crumple of a grade-stained paper, clenched in her father’s rigid fist.

Lola’s giggles die. 

She shifts into the shadows, where the streets transform. 

Darkness swirls and shifts beneath flickering street lights and against dim yellow house lights and beneath the light of the silver-dime moon. 

_(In this netherworld, there is possibility. In this netherworld, there is hope. In this netherworld, there is creation-in-the-dark. The streets aren’t streets, but pathways into distant realms. The shadows aren’t shadows, but nymphs and fairies and fire-breathing beasts.)_

Lola throws out her arms and spins, lifting her face to the silver splash of stars. “Take me away,” she calls to the star-gods. “Take me off to a world of art!” _Where I can stick my fingers into vats of paint and smear an assortment of colors along the walls._ Her fingers twitch.

A door slams open. 

A woman in a black robe hovers on the threshold of her suburban split-level, squinting at Lola. “Lola Perez, is that you? What are you doing out here so late – No, never mind that. Hold on, I’ll call your fath—”

The word _father_ splinters in two. Splinters in two like Lola’s splintering heart.

Lola smacks her hands down to her sides and sprints through the streets, toward the edge of town. _So much for sneaking out._ Her feet slap the pavement. Pain tears through her soles.

She is no longer in the world of creativity.

She is in the world of pain. 

In this world, the pain pokes into her heart. A deep, achey kind of pain which ehoes in rhythm with her father’s earlier shouts: _Another D in math! Wake up! Stop dreaming! Stop creating! Become a better student, a better daughter, a better suburban drone. Be more like me!_

The words are echoes, crashing together with the smack of Lola’s soles. _More like me, more like me, more like me._

Her feet slam against pavement, and then against dirt, and then against stone.

Tears bite into Lola’s eyes. Pain, pain, pain.

A lake ripples beneath the silver-money moon, lapping at the stony shore.

In the lake, there are middles. Moonlight slipping through the inky darkness of water, creating worlds within the creases of liquid.

Lola fists at her eyes, erasing her tears. Sniffling, she stumbles toward the enchanted lake.

Mermaids live in these waters. They flit from shadow-place to shadow-place, dancing with their tails, laughing their half-fish laugh.

The wind mingles with their laughter.

Lola lifts her hands and swirls, kicking up her feet as though they are the spasms of a tail.

The water splashes against her feet. The mermaids joining in her game.

“I’m going to be like me,” Lola tells them, swaying her hips. She stares out at the worlds reflected across the surface of the lake. So much chaos, but the good kind. The kind you can paint. The kind created by combinations of colors – of darkness and light – to form somehing new. And unique. And special. “I’m going to be like me, and there’s nothing anyone can do to change that.”

The wind chimes, carrying with it the mermaids’ laughter.

On the way home, two things happen.

Lola’s father meets her at the threshold of their suburban split-level, glowering at her from the inky pools of darkness. “Grounded.” He grounds the word between gritted teeth. “Two weeks. Your bedroom. Now.”

Lola hangs her head and stumbles to her room. Her heart dips. 

But then it soars.

Because before Father and after the mermaids, something else happened, too.

She discovered a girl staring out from a second-story window. A girl whose golden hair was lit from behind by an unseen light. Whose blue eyes darkened when they glimpsed Lola, with some kind of uncanny understanding. A girl who placed her hand to the glass, greeting Lola even as she passed.

A girl who paints herself into Lola’s mind. A girl who does not fade when Lola crawls into bed. A girl who remains even when Lola’s black cat jumps onto her chest, curls herself into a ball, and drifts with Lola into black-and-white dreams, where she shivers in the darkness of the lightening night.

* * *

Three years later, midnight fantasies become midnight screams.

Lola’s parents’ voices quake through walls, tremors of sound splintering the silence of Lola’s room. She lays in bed, staring at the light shifting across her ceiling. Every third word is her name, hammered together with words like _disappointment_ and _artist_ and _failure._

Mother tried to intervene tonight. Tried to tell Father to stop shouting, to stop making Lola something she is not. 

Mother’s tries became bickering screams. 

Lola traces the scream-words with her fingertip, pretending as though they are art she can change into something else. Something more. 

She swirls her finger through the air, splashing it through midnight-sky dark, reflected through her windowpane, and through the yellow lamp-light, shining from her table. 

She shapes the words into _different_ and _creative_ and _someday a success_.

It does no good.

Her father’s voice is booming, a clap of thunder, an earthquake’s roar of sound.

And her mother’s voice has dwindled to a whisper.

Lola’s cat pounces onto her lap. _“Mrow?”_ she asks, studying Lola with her emerald eyes. Her paws are a warm pressure against Lola’s legs. A kneading kind of pressure. Comforting. Rhythmic.

Lola scratches daVinci behind her ears. “You don’t think I’m a failure, do you?”

“Mrow.” Closing her eyes, daVinci rocks back onto her hind quarters. Her purrs shift through the room, shaping Lola’s father’s shouts into something Other. Something distant. 

Echoes from another world.

Lola sighs. “Someday, I’ll get you a harness. We’ll travel the world, creating art.”

daVinci seems to like that idea. She curls into a ball and stretches out her legs, rewarding Lola with deeper purring.

That night, Lola paints daVinci onto a canvas print. Splashes of black. Streaks of emerald. And a darkness-and-light that reminds her of her kitty’s purrs. Unlike the darkness-and-light of three years earlier, this one is sort of warm.

* * *

Lola does not apply to college.

Her grades are the shapes of failure she cannot transform with the swish of her fingertip.

She spends her midnights at frat parties, blurring reality with the sting of alcohol, splashed against her throat.

She spends her midnights at toga parties, blurring reality with music and dance, rubbing her body against people she’ll never see again.

She spends her midnights wishing she could break free of the cage her father constructed the day Lola picked up a crayon.

She spends her midnights wandering the streets in her Jeep, wishing she could stare at the world through headlights which scatter all shadows instead of through eyes too sensitive to separate darkness from light. _(And then she decorates her headlights with eyelashes to help them see.)_

And sometimes, she spends her midnights stopped beneath the window of the girl with the sunshine hair and the lake-blue eyes, which, when they focus in on Lola, blink in alternating shades of darkness and light.

One night, the girl raises her hand to the glass, like the first time.

Lola raises her hand back. And whispers, “Hello, girlfriend.”

Another story for another time.

* * *

The sunshine-and-lake girl finds her way into Lola’s world.

At first, she stumbles through Lola’s half-locked party-girl walls.

She becomes _almost job snatcher_ and _too perfect_ and _babysitter from the deeper regions of suburban hell._

She is perky and perfect and blonde. A girl who crafts good grades without shaping them from midnight fantasies and kitty purrs. Someone whose parents do not scream or call her _failure_. A girl who can corral a group of kids through the pits of city streets and still arrive home with a moonlit smile, not a sunshine hair out of place.

She is Lola’s crisis.

And her redemption. 

Her redemption, who empowers her when they’re both navigating the city slums, guiding their group of miscreant children through mazes of criminals and speakeasy rap bars and laundry-shops-where-they-hang-from-laundry-lines, riding-them-through-shadows-of-darkness-and-of-light. 

Her redemption, who teaches her she can be a grown-up, be responsible, be kind, be the girl who gets the art job. _( A job with her favorite artist. A job where she can be creative, be herself, be the girl who believes in midnight fantasies and splashes-of-paint-splattered-in-random-not-random-order-across-a-creative-canvas. A job that gives her a chance to rise above_ failure _and into the realms of_ someday a success _._ )

Her redemption, who becomes her friend. Her friend, who meets her at art shows, where she links their arms and whispers, “Someday, this will be you.”

And Lola believes her.

Her friend, who once was a window girl, and then became a crisis, and then, somewhere in the middle, became so much more. Maybe when she handed Lola an application to art school and said, “You can do it. I know you can.”

Maybe when Lola took that application and believed what Jenny said was true. 

That night, holding her application, she stares into Jenny’s lake-blue eyes – eyes of warmth, alternating between shades of darkness of light – and finds creation in their riddle. The riddle of a girl who is so much more than perfection and straight-A’s.

Jenny, too, has a secret. She is a creator and a student; a middle. Someone who sees truth in fantasy. Who dreams in color.

Lola cradles the art school application against her chest. “Maybe I will. If you think it’s worth trying for.”

Jenny cups Lola’s hand. “I do.” 

For splintered heartbeats, they gaze into each other’s eyes. And in Jenny’s words, Lola hears belief.

One night, Jenny braves Lola’s parents. She comes to Lola’s house and sits with her at dinner. She winces when Lola’s father laughs at Lola’s job _(“An artist. How will you ever pay off all those parking tickets?”)_.

The word artist sounds a lot like _failure_.

And in that moment, when Lola’s face burns, Jenny drops her fork into her lap.

She stares Lola’s father in the eyes and says, “Have you ever met your daughter? She’s nothing like you, but she’s still special. And she will be a success. Open your eyes.”

Lola’s eyes fly wide. Is this girl, her champion, the _yes girl_ of so many parents with baby-sittable children, actually defying her father?

Lola’s mother gasps and drops her fork onto her plate. 

It clatters to the floor, where daVinci laps at it with her smooth pink tongue.

Lola swallows a fireball from her throat. It tastes like smoke and burns like flame, but splinters the cracked wood that has for so long buried her words. 

“Stop it.” She yanks her napkin from her lap and slaps it onto the table. “I’m already a success. I’m working for the best artist in the city, and Jenny’s helping me fill out college applications.”

Her father’s gaze hardens. “How will you get into college with grades like yours? Pipe dreams, Lola. Give them up.”

Jenny jumps from the table. Her napkin and fork both topple to the floor.

daVinci yowls and jumps into Jenny’s arms. Together, the two glare at her father, one through eyes of emerald, the other through eyes of lake-blue. “Grades aren’t the only deciding factor,” Jenny says, cradling daVinci against her heart. “Lola’s an amazing artist. And she will make it. Because I say so.”

Lola’s mother holds up her hands. “Now, I don’t think –”

“I think you should both leave.” Lola’s father waves them toward the door. “Dinner’s finished, anyway. Thank you for joining us, Miss Parker.”

_Enough._ If Jenny’s brave enough to stand up against her father, then Lola sure as hell can, too.

The fireball that had singed Lola’s throat burns its way to her lips. “We’ll leave.” She pushes from her chair and comes to stand beside Jenny. “But not because you say so, Daddy. Because _we_ do.”

With that, she links her arm through Jenny’s and, with daVinci _mrow_ ing, they step for the door.

For the first time since the night Lola escaped into fantasy, the world seems opened wide.

* * *

Midnight fantasies and midnight screams become midnight cuddles and midnight kisses.

They cuddle together in Lola’s Jeep, the silver-dime moon shining through the windows and the Jenny-blue lake lapping against a nearby shore. _(daVinci curls in the backseat, licking her paws.)_

Lola leans her head against Jenny’s shoulder. Her heart is open wide, vulnerable and free. Shadows flicker across the waters – darkness and light – concealing the dances of mermaids and the laughter of nymphs. But everything is magical.

Out here, with her champion, Lola is free. Dreams are real, and not suburban pain. She can apply to college. She will apply to college. And maybe, that college will be near Jenny’s soon-to-be university, and they can dream this colorful dream together.

“I used to think you were perfect,” Lola whispers into Jenny’s ear. Sunshine hair flits across her lips.

“Funny.” Jenny nuzzles Lola’s cheek. “I used to want to be just like you. Brave. And carefree.”

The fireball on Lola’s lips slips down into her chest, blazing pathways into her now-vulnerable heart. “What if we try being brave and carefree together?”

She’s almost convinced she’s dreamed the words. They’re like nothing she’s ever spoken.

But then Jenny lifts her head. And turns. And gazes into Lola’s eyes, a blush splashed across her cheeks. “What are you saying?”

Lola has never been a wordsmith. She’s all sarcasm and wit.

So she shapes the words with her lips instead.

She presses them to Jenny’s. And brings forth a sigh.

The moon dances shadows through the windows, creating patterns of darkness and light.

But Lola’s chest is fire warm. And her hands are threaded through Jenny’s sunshine hair. And her ears are filled with Jenny’s sigh and daVinci’s purrs.

Pure warmth.

She deepens the kiss. And transforms midnight fantasies into midnight realities.


End file.
